L.A. Scene July ’09: Dykeotomy, Outfest, and Parties

By
on

July 27, 2009

L.A. Scene is a monthly column that chronicles lesbian nightlife and events of interest in Los Angeles. Sarah Witness, an East Coast transplant and obvious femme, has been navigating the snark infested waters of Hollywood since 2001. Although she’s an NYU trained actress, she prefers sipping vodka and making idle chit-chat at really gay nightclubs.

Dykeotomy

I recently attended the Dykeotomy launch party at Here Lounge. What is Dykeotomy? Well that’s what I spent the majority of the party trying to figure out. The rest of the time I was in the bathroom line.

It seems that Dykeotomy is a concept, and this being Los Angeles, a concept is nothing if it is not a brand. It all began when Logan Alexander, of the Janice Dikinson Modeling Agency show, asked his very butch cousin if he could photograph her in extremely feminine clothing and make-up. She consented, and impressed with the results, Logan convinced other butch women to do the same.

The photographs and interviews with the models are soon to be released as a book.

At this point in the explanation I started to wonder if this was an offensive experiment. I couldn’t put my finger on why it seemed wrong, but something about “femming-up” these women just smacked of a step backward in a battle they’ve probably fought their whole lives.

I then met Logan, who is charming, eloquent, and gay, and decided he probably didn’t hold these women at gunpoint and force them into reverse-drag so maybe I should lighten up.

Logan explains his vision of Dykeotomy this way:

The concept behind Dykeotomy is simple, and it’s that we all have masculine and feminine traits and we sometimes get stuck in expressing ourselves one way or another, and the mission is for gender expression to be a little more fluid. It started off as a simple idea for a coffee table book and has grown into a conversation around gender expression, a movement because the participants and a lot of people involved or introduced to the project have expressed their own personal struggles with their own dichotomy and have embraced a bit more of the complexities of self.

On a personal note, I’ve always been bothered that women aren’t represented as equals in society and I chose this subculture of women because they seem even more under represented.

Show off.

Anyhoo, the party was at Here Lounge and it was a more sophisticated and slightly older crowd than is usually found at Here’s Thursday night event, the unfortunately named “Panty Raid.”

It was attended by hundreds of people who had limited understanding of, but total enthusiasm for the event. “Dykeotomy” the book will be out soon. Check out the photos below for a preview. Pretty intriguing, no?